Over the years, technology has taken over the lives of the majority of the world, whether that be in the depths of the countryside or in the streets of the concrete jungles. In bustling cities, buskers fill the streets and the underground as people rush past them with their headphones plugged in as they continue on with their busy day. In contrast, if we go into the depths of the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, the Kaluli tribe use the music of birdsong to understand their relationship with the natural environment as well as a way to connect with their ancestors who have passed away. It seems that wherever you are in the world, you cannot escape the power of music, but how can a geographical approach to the senses affect our experience of music? We want to explore how people move through both space and place when surrounded by music and what this approach to the senses can tell us about our experience with music. We will look at the combination of a geographical approach and the experience of music and how it affects our senses, emotions as well as our personal relationships with our surroundings.

Our first project was to look at how the experience of music can change in different spaces. In contrast to place, space is not meaningful, it is just an area that we move through. When walking through the streets of Bristol, there is so much life going on around you which affects all of the senses. We found that at as soon as we put our headphones on, the music narrowed down our senses and we were not as aware of what was happening around us. We felt that the senses which were most dulled down were sound and touch. Immediately the noises of the city were blocked out and we were less conscious of things that we might bump into as we were so engulfed by the music. Another example of this is when you are at a gig or a festival, you constantly bump into people as you are in such a confined space but you often are not aware of the other people around you as you are so focused on the music.